The Mighty 'Jungle'

A hundred years ago, an American writer hurled these words at the world: " 'Bubbly Creek' is an arm of the Chicago River, and forms the southern boundary of the yards; all the drainage of the square mile of packing house empties into it, so that it is really a great open sewer a hundred or two feet wide. One long arm of it is blind, and the filth stays there forever and a day. The grease and chemicals that are poured into it undergo all sorts of strange transformations, which are the cause of its name; it is constantly in motion, as if huge fish were feeding in it, or great leviathans were disporting themselves in its depths. Bubbles of carbonic acid gas will rise to the surface and burst, and make rings two or three feet wide. Here and there the grease and filth have caked solid, and the creek looks like a bed of lava; chickens walk about on it, feeding, and many times an unwary stranger has started to stroll across, and vanished temporarily. The packers used to leave the creek that way, till every now and then the surface would catch on fire and burn furiously, and the fire department would have to come and put it out. Once, however, an ingenious stranger came and started to gather this filth in scows, to make lard out of; then the packers took the cue, and got out an injunction to stop him, and afterwards gathered it themselves."

It might be Dickens in "Our Mutual Friend" (1865), tracing the vile kinship between the black Thames and the great city of Dust. The chickens walking on the gruesome paste are to die for — Hollywood would sign a deal at that point, over a Chateaubriand dinner — though that "temporarily" is awkward and innocent in the writing. In Dickens, the vanishing would have been utter. So, no, this author is not quite Dickens, even if he wrote with a similar fluency and need. Instead — and Chicago has given it away — this is Upton Sinclair, who lived longer than Dickens by far, and wrote so many more novels. Sinclair died in 1968, at 90. Dickens would have been 90 in 1902. Yet Dickens is the more awesome for dying in his 50's, taken by the dread that had made him so lively. Dickens didn't have to face being a living monument. Upton Sinclair lived on until such times as his "Jungle" had been cleared, and America — it told itself — was strong, healthy and wise from the bright red meat laid out in the chilled tombs of 10,000 supermarkets.

Still, in this centenary year for his most famous book — the readability of which is, I hope, established — what are we to make of Sinclair? We have two new biographies on the table, beggingly lean and artfully digested, as if the publishers had told their authors: "Show some moderation. Pick out the high points. If we get a hundred kids to look at 'The Jungle,' we'll have done honor by the old boy. How's your burger?" Both Anthony Arthur's and Kevin Mattson's books are reasonable in length and tempered in passion. Pushed to choose, I prefer Arthur's. But to feel the wonderful nut and enthusiast in Sinclair, the intrigued newcomer should read "The Jungle" or "King Coal." Then realize that this author was a very good and ardent tennis player! Eight thousand words a day and three sets — with no tie breakers.

Upton Beall Sinclair wrote habitually, at the drop of a hat, and at the death of every sparrow. He produced more than 80 books, as well as countless speeches, letters, notes and proposals. I suspect that he talked almost as he wrote on paper, as if preparing for a public lecture, and that may account for his dismay over the way he and women didn't quite understand each other. He wrote about so many things that when his greatest test came — in the California gubernatorial election of 1934 — his opponents had only to hire researchers to go through his stuff to retrieve all the contradictory, crazy things "Uppie" had written. Not that they stopped at that tactic.

As 1934 made clear, Sinclair was a man of action, a writer who longed to act out his own dogma. Born into a comfortable Baltimore family, he entered City College of New York when he was 15. He began writing sketches for magazines to pay his expenses, and after graduation became a full-time writer. He was assisted by clean living, restrained socializing and an indefatigable eye for wrongs in the world as well as the confidence that good sense would surely see them corrected. His friend Charlie Chaplin never knew him without a smile, and one wonders if even the writing of "Bubbly Creek" was accompanied by a smile of wonder and satisfaction. He would be called a muckraker, but he loved muck in the way farmers love soil.

Photo

Upton Sinclair broadcasting a speech during his campaign for governor of California, 1934.Credit
Associated Press

The exposé of the meat industry in "The Jungle" seems like the tirade of a lifetime, yet Sinclair needed just seven weeks of research. The book was a huge success. It prompted real reforms, including the Pure Food Act of 1906 But a pattern was set for his books, and it was strengthened by the spine of theoretical socialism — public ownership, women's rights and taxes as a privilege reserved for the rich. "The Jungle" had its impact on Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis and Steinbeck, but Upton Sinclair is not in their class as a novelist because he does not see or inhabit character and emotional plot in the way that he editorializes over situation, grievance and muck. "Oil!" (1927) has more of a story than "The Jungle," and it reflects Sinclair's crucial shift to Southern California, where he had moved in 1916. He loved the sun, the air and the political possibilities — why not put an exiled czar on Catalina Island?

In the early 30's, when Sergei Eisenstein came to Hollywood, Sinclair became one of his best friends and co-workers. A plan to film Dreiser's "American Tragedy" collapsed, but Sinclair joined in the partnership that would send Eisenstein to Mexico to shoot the footage — poetic, repetitious, marvelous, mysterious — that became "Que Viva México!" In many ways, the innocent Uppie was trapped — by the very slippery Eisenstein, who was looking for gay romance and pornography (as well as high art), and by the Soviet authorities whose plan it was that Eisenstein was doomed. So the picture was unfinished. Uppie cut his own version, and was accused of trampling on Eisenstein's art. The radical innocent had a way of getting himself into intellectual slapstick.

Then came the 1934 election. Sinclair saw America in a crisis, and he was hardly alone. So he gave up his socialist ties, became a Democrat and announced a plan called EPIC (End Poverty in California), which called for turning all idle agricultural land over to unemployed farmworkers and combining factories and businesses into a giant state-run cooperative. He won the Democratic primary and opposed Gov. Frank Merriam, a nonentity. Sinclair was a terrific campaigner, and his early energy united every reactionary force against him — including The Los Angeles Times and the picture business, both of which were terrified by his plans. Louis B. Mayer arranged "newsreels" in which every "decent" person said they were for Merriam while every wild-eyed, unwashed vagrant to be picked up for a quarter ranted into the camera about Uppie's plans. Late in the race, unable to get President Roosevelt to do a single thing in his support, Sinclair let slip the possibility that if he was elected "half the unemployed" might travel to California. On election day, he went down, losing 879,537 votes to 1,138,620.

To this day, a great book or movie about Los Angeles could be set against the backdrop of the election. It looks increasingly like the last great outcry of the left in America, and it shows the ugly alliance of every rich and insecure entity that could make curse words out of "socialist" or "liberal."

Sinclair was not really set back personally. But he began to behave more like a middle-aged or semi-retired workaholic. The year 1940 saw the publication of "World's End," the first in what became known as the Lanny Budd novels, in which a well-raised young man confronts the problems of the world. They are as resolutely 19th-century as nearly everything Sinclair wrote, though they have a Dos Passos-like interest in reproducing famous figures. "World's End" sold half a million copies: Uppie's gravest warnings usually left him richer. The sequels spilled out, and one of them picked up a Pulitzer Prize to go along with the Nobel he had won in 1930.

Arthur and Mattson admire Sinclair, yet it's hard not to feel the strain in the enterprises. Can such an author be revived as someone to be read today? Haven't times changed out of sight? Does anyone eat beef today and think of the stockyards? Well, yes, I think beef is still under suspicion, along with just about everyone who feeds the enormous public. Eric Schlosser and others are still questioning the food culture. But the real thing about "The Jungle" is the way Sinclair saw the vicious link between "them" and "us," a dramatic paranoia straight from Dickens. If Sinclair were here today, I'd send him to the San Joaquin Valley, where vegetables fit for Hockney and every farmers' market are produced through dire exploitation. I'd urge him to go to Salinas, John Steinbeck's hometown, where the public libraries nearly closed recently for lack of funding and where the prospects for Hispanics who work the valley are expatriation, gang warfare, a broken back in the sun and the chemicals or . . . the American dream.

There was a period in this country, from the 30's through the 70's, in which government caring seemed to ease away some of the muck. We think of it as the Great Society, and we recall people and politicians who voiced hope for it without irony. It's clearer now that the middle class — the great force that made Dickens's England more benevolent — is in retreat. We are getting back to them and us, in a country that has earned little but shame in its foreign affairs. We are not liked, we are not trusted, we are not respected — and all those shortcomings are eroding our domestic souls. Katrina, that gust of nature, was the rehearsal for the revelation that "they" now have neither the means nor the intent of looking after us. We are on our own, and we may need to find our own Sinclairs.

David Thomson is the author of "The New Biographical Dictionary of Film" and "The Whole Equation: A History of Hollywood." His book "Nicole Kidman" will be published in the fall.

Correction: July 02, 2006, Sunday:

Because of an editing error, a review on Page 10 of the Book Review today, about "Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair," by Anthony Arthur and "Upton Sinclair and the Other American Century," by Kevin Mattson, misidentified the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930. Although Upton Sinclair campaigned for the award, it was won by Sinclair Lewis.